548 GOLDEN PLOVER. 
“stands ” visit the coasts from early in autumn onwards, especially 
when the light of the moon enables them to feed by night. 
In summer the Golden Plover has been found on Jan Mayen and 
in Greenland; while it is a regular visitor to Iceland, the Fzroes 
and Northern Europe, and breeding as far south as the moors of 
Brabant, Luxembourg, Germany, and sparingly in Switzerland. 
Over the rest of the Continent it occurs on migration, passing the 
cold season in the basin of the Mediterranean, and wandering to 
Madeira as well as down the coast of Africa to Cape Colony. It 
visits Novaya Zemlya, and inhabits the tundras of Siberia as far 
east as the Yenesei, but there the smaller C. dominicus (the subject 
of the next article) predominates, and becomes its representative in 
Eastern Siberia. In winter our Golden Plover has been found in 
Turkestan, Baluchistan and Sind. 
The slight and scantily-lined depression which serves for a nest is 
usually in short grass or heather, though often where the ground is 
quite bare; the eggs, 4 in number, are large in proportion to the 
size of the bird, and are of a yellowish stone-colour handsomely 
blotched and spotted with rich brownish-black : measurements 2 by 
14 in. Incubation, in which the male takes an important part, 
commences towards the end of April even on the bleak moors of 
Northumberland, but is later in Northern Europe; the young run 
as soon as they are hatched, though unable to fly for a month or five 
weeks, The food consists of insects and their larve, worms, slugs, 
small molluscs, the fry of the common.mussel, and a little vegetable 
matter. The note is a clear whistling ¢/z, often heard by night over 
large towns at the times of passage; the spring-call being described 
by Mr. Abel Chapman as #7r7-péé-you. 
In spring the adult male has the forehead white; crown, nape 
and mantle blackish, profusely spotted with gamboge-yellow, the 
markings on the inner secondaries being of an oak-leaf pattern; 
tail barred with brown ; above the eye a white line which continues 
down each side to the neck and even to the flanks; under parts 
black ; axillaries white; bill, legs and feet black ; no hind-toe. 
Length 11 in. ; wing 7°5 in. The female has usually less black 
on the breast. After the autumnal moult the under parts are white, 
tinged with dusky yellowish-brown on the breast, and the upper parts 
are more yellow than they are in spring, when the breast becomes 
black: sometimes by the end of February in England. The young 
resemble their parents in winter-plumage, but are still yellower above; 
the flanks are more. mottled, and the tips of the axillaries are often 
spotted with ash-brown, although the bases of those feathers are white. 
